DURHAM, N.C. -- Weeks after slamming the North American Free Trade Agreement in Ohio, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have retooled their messages for Indiana and North Carolina, states that have made gains from free trade amid losses elsewhere.

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Ahead of Tuesday's primaries in both states, the Democratic candidates had campaign schedules that started at dawn and had them going well into the night. Tuesday marks Sen. Clinton's best chance at changing the momentum in the race, and she is widely expected to win Indiana, while Sen. Obama is favored in North Carolina.

Writer Seeks to Chronicle Events in Areas Hit by Crackdown

By Jill Drew
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 6, 2008; A10

BEIJING -- Each morning, it is the same. She rises and heads to her computer to write, to pierce the silence that otherwise shrouds events these days in Tibet, her homeland.

Woeser, a 41-year-old writer who uses only one name in the Tibetan tradition, knows she risks arrest. Hers is one of the only Tibetan voices within China that still reaches the outside world, now that the Chinese government has arrested hundreds and essentially blacked out most communication from Tibetan-inhabited areas.

Investors, take heart: Warren Buffett sees investment opportunities in the U.S. stock and bond markets, and believes widespread financial turmoil from the credit crunch is behind us.

All eyes were on Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting at the Qwest Center in Omaha, Neb.

Speaking to reporters Sunday, a day after Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s annual fan-fest for shareholders at the Qwest Center in Omaha, Neb., both Mr. Buffett, 77 years old, and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, 84, criticized regulators, politicians and accountants for lax oversight of financial institutions that are at the center of the subprime-mortgage crisis, and, according to Mr. Munger, were guilty of "deep conflicts of interest."

By Eli Saslow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 5, 2008; A01

LUMBERTON, N.C. -- Bill Clinton swung open the screen door and stepped onto Baxter Williams's front porch, its wooden floorboards creaking beneath him. The former president, a veteran speechmaker used to 50,000-seat stadiums and convention halls, sipped from a bottle of water and took in his latest venue. An abandoned sewage plant to his left. A barking dog to his right. An overturned trampoline in Williams's front yard directly ahead.

Clinton had traveled here, to a dead-end street in a 22,000-person town that no other U.S. president had ever visited, to make the case for his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. But first, as he stared out at the 300-plus people and their various pets lounging in the overgrown weeds of Williams's lawn, he felt it necessary to clarify something.

By Jackson Diehl
Monday, May 5, 2008; A17

Last Tuesday, Israel faced the fallout from a Palestinian family of five perishing in the Gaza Strip during an Israeli strike against militants firing rockets at an Israeli town. On Wednesday, the Bush administration woke to a front-page picture in The Post of a 2-year-old Iraqi boy killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad aimed at Shiite militiamen launching rockets at the city's Green Zone. The similarity of these tragic and politically costly episodes was anything but a coincidence.

For months now, Israel has been mired in an unwinnable war against Hamas and allied militias in Gaza, who fire missiles at civilians in Israel and then hide among their own women and children, ensuring that retaliatory fire will produce innocent victims for the Middle East's innumerable satellite television networks. A growing number of the militiamen have been to Iran for training, and some of the missiles they launch are Iranian-made. Their objective is obvious: to exhaust Israelis with an endless war of attrition while making it impossible for Israel's government to reach a political settlement with the more moderate Palestinian administration in the West Bank.

Tehran Funneling Weapons, Officials Say

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 5, 2008; A10

BAGHDAD, May 4 -- The Iraqi government said Sunday that it has "concrete evidence" Iran is fomenting violence in Iraq and that a high-level panel had been formed to document the proof.

The statement came as Iraqi officials find themselves trapped between the United States and Iran, which have each accused the other of wreaking havoc in Iraq. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is in a particularly delicate situation because he is close to American and Iranian officials.

Democrats Seek Indiana, N.C. Votes

By Shailagh Murray and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 4, 2008; A11

INDIANAPOLIS, May 3 -- Sen. Barack Obama sought to shore up support among working-class voters Saturday as he launched a closing drive to secure a pair of primary victories on Tuesday that could end Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's hopes of wresting the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton, campaigning with growing confidence, hopes to capitalize on her victory in Pennsylvania two weeks ago and the rising importance of economic issues to help carry Indiana and hold down the margin of Obama's expected victory in North Carolina. Accomplishing those two things, her advisers believe, will allow her to press her case with superdelegates that she would be a stronger candidate against Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Both Candidates Focusing on Economy

By Dan Balz and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 3, 2008; A06

RALEIGH, N.C., May 2 -- Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama escalated their debate Friday over rolling back gasoline taxes, with Obama criticizing her plan to suspend the tax this summer as a costly "political stunt" and with Clinton casting the issue as a choice between standing with consumers or the oil industry.

Clinton, sounding a populist tone throughout the day, leveled a sharp blast at energy traders, OPEC nations and the energy industry. She called for a federal investigation of possible market manipulation and urged a much tougher stance toward the energy-producing nations, including possible action before the World Trade Organization.

Political Diary
May 3, 2008

Gas Tax Burlesque
INDIANAPOLIS – Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania by feeling the pain of blue-collar voters. Now she's trying for a repeat here in Indiana, playing on voter frustration over high gas prices.

Mrs. Clinton addressed factory workers earlier this week at this city's Miller Veneers plant, which produces hardwood veneers. She railed against high pump prices and the "record" profits of oil companies, then introduced her five-point plan, which consists of equal parts fulminating at Big Oil and OPEC and waiving the federal gas tax for the summer while possibly releasing oil from the strategic reserve.

As was the case with the previous games in the series, activist groups, police, politicians, and surviving victims of violence criticized Grand Theft Auto IV last week, beginning shortly after the game was launched nationwide.